NPR’s Tiny Desk Road Tour Hits Austin

NPR’s Tiny Desk tour stopped by Austin’s Mohawk for a sold-out show and featured rising artists, this year’s contest winner, and alumni.

NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, launched in 2008, has become a millennium staple, showcasing top artists like Mac Miller, Sting, and BTS in an intimate office setting. This unique format has garnered massive traction and a cult following among music lovers across diverse genres.

In 2014, Tiny Desk began a contest, inviting musicians nationwide to submit performances for a chance at their own Tiny Desk show and a tour spot. The 2025 contest, launched this February, saw over 6,500 submissions. Ruby Ibarra was selected to tour all ten cities, joined by a local rising artist and a mystery Tiny Desk alum at each stop.

Austin was one of the lucky cities to be selected for the limited run of shows on the Tiny Desk On The Road Tour, which happened to take place on the outside stage at the Mohawk. The crowd for the sold out show was packed, waiting in anticipation to see the opening act of the evening. The show began with NPR event organizers giving the show’s introduction and speaking on the importance of supporting local musicians and NPR radio.

After the grand introduction they welcomed local indy-pop artists, Somebody Someone, to the stage. The solo act accompanied by a backing band created beautiful melancholy harmonies on stage as they sang with a wide range of notes and not missing a single note on the piano. They spoke on the importance of being seen as a non-binary and gender fluid person during the current political climate before getting off stage to an adoring crowd of potentially new fans.

Going right into the next set, contest winner Ruby Ibarra took to the stage. The Filipino, Bay-Area based female rapper had her energy up to level 10 and had the whole crowd shaking and grooving to the unique culturally diverse sounds that she and her backing band delivered. The music stood out on its own delivering sounds, rhythms and influences from across the board, to call this rap, funk, or putting any sort of label on this artist would be doing her injustice.

Not only was Ruby’s rapping and energy on point but her whole band brought crazy chops as well. Her backing vocalists did an amazing solo performance mid way through the set and Ruby’s backing guitarists just so happened to be from one of the first all female rock bands Fanny, in which they performed one of their early 70s hits. The Texas heat was fierce but that didn’t stop Ruby from jumping all over the stage and even into the crowd to show and prove why she was well deserving of her contest win.

This show’s musical genres were all over the place giving a little bit of something for everyone, first starting off the night with indy-pop, then moving into futuristic multi-cultural hip-hop, and for the last artist of the night, the show ended with some good ol’ Texas country from Maren Morris. As the only Texas stop on the tour, it was only appropriate that the show would end with a country artists from the state of Texas.

Morris hit the stage with only a guitarist and backing vocalist accompanying her bellowing vocals. The singer had incredible chemistry between her band mates and told stories of musical career growing up in Texas and early days performing in Austin between songs. As she prepares for her upcoming set at ACL this year, Morris also included a cover from fellow ACL performer Rilo Kelly. It was a fun set to end the night full of surprises and new musical experiences as NPR did what they do best, connect future stars with their new found fans.